Music To Their Ears

It is a few minutes before a Philadelphia Orchestra concert one
crisp November morning at the Academy of Music.

Here inside this elegant hall, recently featured in Martin
Scorsese's film adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of
Innocence, you can easily imagine yourself transported back to the 19th
century, sitting in the hall's red-plush seats and admiring its
gold-leaf adorned balconies, ready to enjoy an hour or two of exquisite
classical music.

But this moment of reverie is quickly interrupted by the clamor of
young voices. The cacophony of excited chatter drowns out the sound of
the musicians warming up, save for the booming timpani.

"Hey, I know that kid!''

"Get out of the way, dummy.''

The thud, thud, thud of children tromping down the aisle adds to the
commotion.

"KIR-STEN!''

The lights dim, and most of the audience screams.

A Critical Crossroads

This lively performance is one element in a broad effort by the
Philadelphia Orchestra to reach out to students in the nation's
sixth-largest school district. Other components include classroom
instruction, a visiting-musician program, a student music competition,
weekend children's concerts, and a newsletter.

Such efforts here and in other cities to nurture future aficionados
of great music have become an increasingly critical mission for the
nation's symphony orchestras as they grapple with the issues of aging
audiences, declining subscriptions, and rising budget deficits.

Meanwhile, the number of public schools offering music education has
been declining steadily since the 1960's. General-music classes are
available in just 35 percent of small secondary schools and 20 percent
of large secondary schools, according to a report released last summer
by a task force of the American Symphony Orchestra League.

If they are to survive and thrive in the 21st century, orchestras
must address recent demographic shifts and the increased competition
for public and private funds, concludes the report, "Americanizing the
American Orchestra.''

"Without significant change,'' the report warns, "orchestras could
easily become both culturally and socially irrelevant, and the
orchestra field would have missed an opportunity to evolve into a
revitalized musical and cultural force in this country.''

While many symphony orchestras have long offered children's
concerts, what makes this performance in Philadelphia different is
that, both before and after the concert, the students spend time in the
classroom learning about the music on the program, the composers, and
the instruments used on stage.

In an effort to encourage an interdisciplinary, thematic approach,
the orchestra distributes a lesson guide developed by area teachers who
serve on an advisory council. Exhibits with a complementary theme are
also on display at the Franklin Institute of Science and the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In addition, the format of the concert itself is animated and
interactive. As students begin arriving about an hour before the
performance, Phyllis B. Susen, the Philadelphia Orchestra's education
director, takes the stage to explain several musical concepts.

Then, Charlotte Blake Alston, a storyteller, energetically recounts
a folk tale with an audience-participation segment in which students
shout "Oh yeah!'' when cued.

Later, the children are encouraged to ask questions from two
microphones in the aisles.

"How much practice do you have [to do] to play in an orchestra?''
one child asks. "What are those pipes for?'' inquires another, pointing
to the hall's organ.

Not a 'One-Shot Deal'

Local educators praise the orchestra's thorough approach.

"One of the things we like about it the most is it's not a
one-shot-deal type of concert,'' says Carol Shiffrin, the reading
specialist at Guion S. Bluford Jr. Elementary School, a public K-5
school in West Philadelphia with a largely African-American
enrollment.

Shiffrin, who also serves on the orchestra's advisory council,
prepares three pre- and three post-concert lessons for the classes
attending the event. The students will also devote about six regular
music classes to concert material.

The theme of this year's first concert is "Tiers of Sound,'' and the
orchestra manual encourages instructors to compare the layers of sound
in music with related concepts in science, art, literature, and other
disciplines.

One piece on the program is Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E flat
major for violin, viola, and orchestra (K. 364), featuring Rachel Segal
and Burchard Tang, two teenage winners of the orchestra's annual
student competition.

A week earlier, the 5th-grade students had discussed the pros and
cons of being a child prodigy. Now, the day before the performance,
Shiffrin reads from a biography of Mozart and encourages the youngsters
to consider the different layers of influence in his work.

"What made a difference in Mozart's life?'' she asks, urging the
students to think in terms of people, places, and events. Later, she
teaches them to dance the minuet.

Not far away at Indian Lane Elementary School, a brand-new school in
Media, Pa., with a largely white enrollment, another 5th-grade class is
learning about the polyphonic counterpoint featured in Bach's
Brandenburg Concerto No. 1.

Teacher David Woods tries to help the students comprehend the layers
of a fugue by having them sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat'' as a round.
He also divides them into four groups and tells each to repeat a letter
of the alphabet in various pitches.

"W,w,w,w,'' intones one group in deep tones. "X,x,x,x,'' shrieks
another in high, shrill pitches.

Later, Woods plays recordings of "Fugue for Tin Horns'' from "Guys
and Dolls'' and Pachelbel's Canon in D, encouraging students to listen
for the different parts to enter.

Erin Patrick, one of the students, says at the concert the next day
that she "wants to hear one instrument by itself, to hear what it
really sounds like.''

"I think it's very interesting for a 5th-grade class like us to see
music played by one of the greatest orchestras in the world,'' Nick
Fox, a classmate, adds.

So far, the student-concert series seems to be a hit. Since Susen
arrived in 1988, ticket sales for the series have risen from 68 percent
of the house's capacity to 94 percent last year. And two of this
season's three concerts are already sold out.

Harold Klein, a violinist who is a 23-year veteran of the orchestra,
says his main hope is that the children who attend the concerts "come
away with some feeling of personal enrichment, that there is some form
of small awakening to the world of the arts.''

Seeking Diversity

Elsewhere around the country, symphony orchestras are employing
similar approaches to establish connections with schoolchildren in
their communities.

Like Susen in Philadelphia, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's
education and outreach director, Mary Wayne Fritzsche, believes that
orchestras need to cultivate students both as listeners of and
participants in music.

Hence, the M.S.O. program encourages students to "get inside the
process from start to finish'' by reading about, writing, performing,
and listening to music.

One group of 2nd through 5th graders even created its own
instruments from found objects--ranging from boards to buckets to
bottles--and put on a performance for orchestra musicians.

And during a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert this fall on the
theme "Courage,'' slides of art that students created while listening
to Jean Sibelius' "Finlandia'' were projected when the piece was
played. Several high school students also served as narrators and
vocalists for the performance.

Another key concern noted in the orchestra-league report is the
racial and ethnic makeup of both orchestras and their audiences.

The vast majority of symphony orchestra musicians today--about 93.3
percent--are white, according to a 1991 orchestra-league survey of 146
of the nation's 640 orchestras. About half of the members coming from
minority groups are Asian, but they still only represent 3.4 percent of
orchestra members. About 1.6 percent of symphony musicians are
African-American, 1.5 percent are Hispanic, and 0.2 percent are Native
American.

In an effort to address the lack of diversity, since 1990 the
Milwaukee orchestra has offered free weekly private lessons for middle
and high school students who are members of minority groups. This year,
20 students will study with orchestra members who volunteer their
time.

Beyond Pearl Jam

Donald Thulean, the vice president for orchestra services at the
American Symphony Orchestra League, views this wide range of outreach
efforts as critical to the future of all orchestras.

"Orchestras' product is serious art music, and art music needs a
certain threshold of awareness and introduction in order for one to
become interested in it,'' Thulean asserts. "We need to make sure we
have a wide spectrum of people for whom both the institution and the
literature are important.''

"Man does not live on Pearl Jam alone,'' agrees Doug Bauer, a
program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, referring
to the popular Seattle rock band. The foundation provides funding for
the Philadelphia Orchestra.

But Bauer observes that there is "a real concern among many cultural
leaders and artistic leaders as to who their audiences are going to be
... when music education is constantly on the chopping block because of
budget concerns.''

"If [the interest] is not instilled in them as children,'' Bauer
wonders, "what's going to happen when they're adults?''

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